Could you answer me honestly why this is so? MGO3 is definitely flawed, but I never quite understood why it received so much hate while MGO2 was praised as something taken before its time in response. I honestly felt like MGO3 was (mostly) an improvement.

I played MGO2 back at its launch, including during its beta (which apparently I never deleted off my PS3?). I admit, I had fallen out of playing during the end of its lifespan in 2012 (I think my prime playing time was during 2008-2009), so I also never saw the game in its final incarnation, which might have been a better experience than the version I played. I also had really shitty internet when I was in college playing this, but my memory of MGO2 was a game with some neat ideas and rough execution, and some outright silly aspects (like box-ducking or whatever it was called) and shooting and aiming was broken. MGO3 felt about the same quality, but with tighter controls and aiming, making nonlethal weaponry relevant, and finding less stupid uses for boxes (although the character customization options weren't as balanced as the Drebin Points system). Did MGO2 flesh out in those last 3 years or something, or is "better" because nostalgia?

I'm interested in trying out MGO2R to find out for myself, but I have to find a nearby gamestop with a cheap copy of the greatest hits disc or something (I gave away my old copy to a friend after I bought the 25th Legacy edition, expecting I would never have a need for two copies of MGS4 ).

True & Honest Fan

Could you answer me honestly why this is so? MGO3 is definitely flawed, but I never quite understood why it received so much hate while MGO2 was praised as something taken before its time in response. I honestly felt like MGO3 was (mostly) an improvement.

Did MGO2 flesh out in those last 3 years or something, or is "better" because nostalgia?

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It's mostly a much more social game and has significantly less instant gratification. There's a lot of fun to be had by spawning with players and mucking about on the server. There was also clan functionality built in and tournament functionality too.

I'm interested in trying out MGO2R to find out for myself, but I have to find a nearby gamestop with a cheap copy of the greatest hits disc or something (I gave away my old copy to a friend after I bought the 25th Legacy edition, expecting I would never have a need for two copies of MGS4 ).

MGSV is my favorite one in the series, essentially covering the time between Peace Walker and Metal Gear 1. It is loaded with dangerous amounts of the 1980s and the gameplay is, IMHO, the best of the series. Its story is also, while traditionally MGS-style convoluted nightmare-fuel, filled with some fantastic moments and the open-ended mission design menas you can come up with some.... Well, unorthodox ways to S-rank a given mission....

MGSV gets a lot of shit because Konami basically kneecapped the game because Kojima kept fucking with them. A lot of story was sliced out at the last minute and while the game still works ostensibly, it's also got some issues that just aren't resolved by this.

All in all, most of them are damned good and worth your time, but a lot of them are timesinks and each and every game in it has some kind of issue or another, ranging from awkward controls to insane design decisions to just poor map design.

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I had heard the reason MGSV went bad is because Konami was already looking towards shutting down their games development and focusing on pachinko. Kojima was taking too long to finish the game and they were worried it was going to be too costly. Even though he released a kind of demo with Ground Zeroes which recouped some costs. So they just went fuck it, fired Kojima since they wouldn't need him anymore with no VG department, and then told the rest of the skeleton crew left to finish up.

Which is probably one of the biggest shames of the Games Industry, I think if Kojima had been allowed to finish, it probably would be considered by many one of, if not the best videogame of all time.

I had heard the reason MGSV went bad is because Konami was already looking towards shutting down their games development and focusing on pachinko. Kojima was taking too long to finish the game and they were worried it was going to be too costly. Even though he released a kind of demo with Ground Zeroes which recouped some costs. So they just went fuck it, fired Kojima since they wouldn't need him anymore with no VG department, and then told the rest of the skeleton crew left to finish up.

Which is probably one of the biggest shames of the Games Industry, I think if Kojima had been allowed to finish, it probably would be considered by many one of, if not the best videogame of all time.

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Bare in mind, the game was already delayed. MGS5 was originally announced to be released in 2014. This was delayed and caused Ground Zeroes to be rendered a separate part of the main game.

There's a lot of questionable decisions Kojima made with the development of MGS5 like having so many rather pointless missions to the game that don't add to the storyline, a complete lacking of bossfights and tons of other staples to the series. It feels much more like a game copying other popular titles and I feel like people are more inclined to forgive him just because he wasn't finished. Despite the incredibly awkward storytelling and unnecessary twist. Bare in mind this used to be a franchise where you were constantly on task in the story and very little time would be wasted. (outside of MGS4).

And this sort of stuff was intentional, he stated he wanted to make Snake more of an observer style character. Which isn't what the fans want at all. It would've taken more than the 1+ year that he probably needed to make a game the fans would've liked.

True & Honest Fan

Bare in mind, the game was already delayed. MGS5 was originally announced to be released in 2014. This was delayed and caused Ground Zeroes to be rendered a separate part of the main game.

There's a lot of questionable decisions Kojima made with the development of MGS5 like having so many rather pointless missions to the game that don't add to the storyline, a complete lacking of bossfights and tons of other staples to the series. It feels much more like a game copying other popular titles and I feel like people are more inclined to forgive him just because he wasn't finished. Despite the incredibly awkward storytelling and unnecessary twist. Bare in mind this used to be a franchise where you were constantly on task in the story and very little time would be wasted. (outside of MGS4).

And this sort of stuff was intentional, he stated he wanted to make Snake more of an observer style character. Which isn't what the fans want at all. It would've taken more than the 1+ year that he probably needed to make a game the fans would've liked.

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Honestly I think people are a lot more inclined to be forgiving because of the situation Kojima was placed into in general. Its pretty much public knowledge now that Konami for a long time was going through some extremely radical changes and overhauls to the gaming branch of the company. The end result is the Pachinko & mobile heavy focused configuration of the company we see today and that is regularly the subject of salt. There are plenty of articles you can during 2015 (while MGSV was in development) where game dev veterans were being reshuffled to work on factory lines and all sorts of problems not even directly related to MGSV or Kojima Productions. Even before the game was finished, there was weirdness, like after Kojima's production team's internet services were cut off from the rest of the company.

MGSV was a game that shifted focus and design in some substantial ways as well. Originally, it was supposed to be an immediate follow up to the ending of Peace Walker, on the PSP or PSVita - development work was even done for the mobile platforms (and eventually abandoned because development wasn't going smoothly for the high end console versions) and moved up to being a multiplatform release - for all major (non-Nintendo) consoles and PC (something I never understood - why would Konami, whose working on downsizing their gaming developments and focusing on mobile, force a mobile project to go triple-a?).

Stop and think about that for a quick moment - Kojima's team, whom previously had only focused on developing a game for any one platform at a time (ports were usually done after the fact and by different development teams) and were known for getting the most out of a single console's hardware and making use of all its features (such as the pressure sensitive buttons for the PS2/PS3, the Ad Hoc Wifi capabilities of the PSP, the rumble features of early PSX games, monkeying around with controller ports and memory card saves) were suddenly responsible for producing a single product on FIVE different sets of hardware, and to make that experience as uniform as possible. They had to get MGSV running on the Xbox 360, a console that was incapable of running MGS4, and was a year older than the system that could.

If multiplatform woes weren't enough, MGSV also went through some serious plot reorganization. The original version was supposed to be about The Boss and her adventures (and for how long that version was worked on, nobody really quite knows.) I think some of this is visible in how the game ultimately ended up - the focus on Parasites that gave people super-powers (and could have explained neatly The Cobra Unit), Volgin being a plot point, the fact that the story doesn't really tell Big Boss' story, certain characters like Ocelot being way out of character, Kaz going from a cool playboy to something focused entirely on Pain, the locations of Northern Africa (where The Boss was to have done shit), the heavy focus of a sniper ally (The End was supposed to have trained The Boss in sniping), just stuff like that, I suppose I might be reaching pretty far on a few of these points. I've always suspected that Ocelot was a substitute for The Sorrow, a more grounded, supportive character, who of course was The Boss' lover (and a lot of fans would argue that relationship still exists), since he wasn't the flamboyant sadist maniac he's been in, well every other game.

Somehow, something was going on, something we'll never really fully understand. Kojima wasn't calling the shots, probably. One shareholder of the company was probably fighting with another, Kojima was caught in the middle. Someone probably mandated the game has to be about "Snake," not some woman (and, in silent rebellion, Kojima takes note that they didn't tell him which "Snake" it had to be about). Forced to make large sweeping changes on the fly as the game shifted from a quick mobile gaming console game about a side character to another "numbered" edition in the main series about the hero on 5 major platforms, 4 of which Kojima's team had never developed for, two of which were new console launches, all with a triple-a budget and expectations. And with the writing on the wall of where they all were going to be in the company within a few years, regardless of whether or not the project was a hit or a failure.

That's not to say Kojima wasn't without fault. Not rehiring Hayter in favor of a bigger named actor, the wild off-characterizations of key figures like Ocelot (regardless of whatever reasons I suspect), trying to pull two or three bait & switches (and botching them all), the decisions to cut the game from 4 zones to 2 (since ground zeroes technically was supposed to be in Phantom Pain where you returned to it, and many multiplayer maps use the setting, and even if it was unfinished they could have used what they had for Liquid's island for SOMETHING, even if it wasn't the super epic battle that was previously planned out), odd characterizations like Quiet, and even odder excuses to try and justify fanservice Quiet, not trying to flesh out more boss battles with the set pieces they did have, et cetra.

But I've ranted enough about this for one day, and my PS4 just finished installing MGO2R, so maybe I'll see you on @Watcher.

True & Honest Fan

The original version was supposed to be about The Boss and her adventures (and for how long that version was worked on, nobody really quite knows.) I think some of this is visible in how the game ultimately ended up - the focus on Parasites that gave people super-powers (and could have explained neatly The Cobra Unit), Volgin being a plot point, the fact that the story doesn't really tell Big Boss' story, certain characters like Ocelot being way out of character, Kaz going from a cool playboy to something focused entirely on Pain, the locations of Northern Africa (where The Boss was to have done shit), the heavy focus of a sniper ally (The End was supposed to have trained The Boss in sniping), just stuff like that, I suppose I might be reaching pretty far on a few of these points. I've always suspected that Ocelot was a substitute for The Sorrow, a more grounded, supportive character, who of course was The Boss' lover (and a lot of fans would argue that relationship still exists), since he wasn't the flamboyant sadist maniac he's been in, well every other game.

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God, this just makes me want a game about the Boss even more. I've spent more time thinking about what it would've been like then I would like to admit.

God, this just makes me want a game about the Boss even more. I've spent more time thinking about what it would've been like then I would like to admit.

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There's probably some mods for the PC version of the game that could make it somewhat like what Kojima had originally envisioned (One of the DLCs does add her sneaking suit, after all). But it would be pretty hard to keep it friendly with the lore, story, etc. unless you're autistic enough to warp it all into one massive fanfic headcanon.

God, this just makes me want a game about the Boss even more. I've spent more time thinking about what it would've been like then I would like to admit.

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Something I thought about after my rant the other day, Lori Alan, the voice actor of The Boss, was hired on for MGSV, whereas Hayter was not. Given that MGSV was planned originally to be about The Boss and not about Snake (Solid, Naked, or otherwise). That could explain why Hayter reported he was never contacted ever about working on MGSV, since Big Boss would have been a young child during the The Boss's early adventures.

Now I don't think that's what happened. I think the truth was the Occam's Razor answer, that Kojima was star struck at the chance of working with bigger named actor, and consequently was an asshole about bringing back Hayter. But it's an interesting coincidence.

There's probably some mods for the PC version of the game that could make it somewhat like what Kojima had originally envisioned (One of the DLCs does add her sneaking suit, after all). But it would be pretty hard to keep it friendly with the lore, story, etc. unless you're autistic enough to warp it all into one massive fanfic headcanon.

Yeah the PC version has some crazy awesome mods available. I played MGSV initially on PS4, but bought the PC version cheap on a steam sale to muck around with some of the mods. I like using it for challenge runs, like "Start a mission with no weapons, steal some from soldiers".

Who knows, maybe in 10 years someone will have cracked MGO3 and finish it up.

True & Honest Fan

Something I thought about after my rant the other day, Lori Alan, the voice actor of The Boss, was hired on for MGSV, whereas Hayter was not. Given that MGSV was planned originally to be about The Boss and not about Snake (Solid, Naked, or otherwise). That could explain why Hayter reported he was never contacted ever about working on MGSV, since Big Boss would have been a young child during the The Boss's early adventures.

Now I don't think that's what happened. I think the truth was the Occam's Razor answer, that Kojima was star struck at the chance of working with bigger named actor, and consequently was an asshole about bringing back Hayter. But it's an interesting coincidence.

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He fell for the celebrity voice actor meme.

And I agree that MGO2 was slightly better. It might be a clunky imbalanced game but I remember it having a lot of game modes.

There's probably some mods for the PC version of the game that could make it somewhat like what Kojima had originally envisioned (One of the DLCs does add her sneaking suit, after all). But it would be pretty hard to keep it friendly with the lore, story, etc. unless you're autistic enough to warp it all into one massive fanfic headcanon.

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I see your point, but MGSV modding seems pretty limited compared to stuff like Bethesda games. Most of the mods are just texture and model changes along with some gameplay tweaks. I'm not sure if you could even do some big ambitious stuff like that.

Besides, we all know about Konami's attitude towards fangames and the like.

). That could explain why Hayter reported he was never contacted ever about working on MGSV, since Big Boss would have been a young child during the The Boss's early adventures.

Now I don't think that's what happened. I think the truth was the Occam's Razor answer, that Kojima was star struck at the chance of working with bigger named actor, and consequently was an asshole about bringing back Hayter. But it's an interesting coincidence.

Yeah the PC version has some crazy awesome mods available. I played MGSV initially on PS4, but bought the PC version cheap on a steam sale to muck around with some of the mods. I like using it for challenge runs, like "Start a mission with no weapons, steal some from soldiers".

Who knows, maybe in 10 years someone will have cracked MGO3 and finish it up.

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I remember reading David Hayter had to audition to play Naked Snake and Old Snake. Kojima wanted to get Kurt Russel for 3 instead of Hayter. It kind of sucks to hear Kojima threw him aside when you hear things like David Hayter forgoing half his paycheck for the Twin Snakes so the rest of the original cast could come back. A lot of his arguments about needing new blood fall short because the Japanese voice actor is the same one its been the whole time. Kojima just wanted some Hollywood talent and probably spent a lot of money for little voice acting.

Metal Gear is just filled with tons of pointless bullshit drama and bits of female-supremacy faggotry. Another reasons why all women should just no exist and why Asians shouldn't be allowed to make games. Stop wasting your money and giving attention to this piece of shit franchise.

Metal Gear is just filled with tons of pointless bullshit drama and bits of female-supremacy faggotry. Another reasons why all women should just no exist and why Asians shouldn't be allowed to make games. Stop wasting your money and giving attention to this piece of shit franchise.

Metal Gear is just filled with tons of pointless bullshit drama and bits of female-supremacy faggotry. Another reasons why all women should just no exist and why Asians shouldn't be allowed to make games. Stop wasting your money and giving attention to this piece of shit franchise.

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Dude, you're like two years late to the Sluthate raid. Get with the times bro.

Staff MemberModeratorTrue & Honest Fan

i have always wanted to get into the mgs games, but i never did. i always hear good things about them, though, so i feel like i am missing out.
is it worth it to play all the games?

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I appreciate Kojima's originality when it comes to game design, but the more I hear about later games and their writing totally push me away.
A friend of mine says to only play Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 and that's really the only thing actually worth a damn as a game.

Like you, I've kept it in mind, but haven't been too serious in getting it done.

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